But this is the amazing message, and this is what is meant by justification – that God tells us that, as the result of the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, because of his life, his death and his resurrection, if we believe on him and trust ourselves solely and entirely to him, God pardons and forgives our sins. Not only that, he declares that we are free from guilt: more than that, justification includes this. He not only declares that we are pardoned and forgiven and that we are guiltless, he also declares that we are positively righteous. He imputes to us, that is, he puts to our account, the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ himself, who was entirely without sin, who never failed his Father in any way, and who never broke a Commandment or transgressed any law. God gives to us – puts upon us – the righteousness of the Lord Jesus Christ himself, and then looks upon us and pronounces that we are righteous in his holy sight. That is the biblical doctrine of justification.

Prayer, in many ways, is the supreme expression of our faith in God and our faith and confidence in the promises of God. There is nothing that a man ever does which so proclaims his faith as when he gets down on his knees and looks to God and talks to God. It is a tremendous confession of faith. I mean by this that he is not just running with his requests and petitions, but if he really waits upon God, if he really looks to God, he is there saying, ‘Yes, I believe it all, I believe that you are a rewarder of them that diligently seek you, I believe you are the Creator of all things and all things are in your hands. I know there is nothing outside of your control. I come to you because you are in all this and I find peace and rest and quiet in your holy presence and I am praying to you because you are what you are.’ That is the whole approach to prayer that you find in the teaching of Scripture.

What he [Christ] has done for us is that he has satisfied the law and all its demands. It is amazing to me how people can look at and preach about Christ, his life and death and never mention the law. But unless the law of God is satisfied, there is no salvation. The law is opposed to us; it stands there and demands a perfect, absolute obedience and it threatens us with death if we fail in any one respect. If Christ has not fulfilled the law, we are yet in our sins, we are undone, we are damned and we are lost, but he has finished the work, the books have been cleared, the law has been satisfied, there is therefore no condemnation to them that are in Christ Jesus. Do you know that? Are you rejoicing in it? Are you ready to take your stand with Toplady and say:

The terrors of law and of God
With me can have nothing to do,
My Saviour’s obedience and blood
Hide all my transgressions from view.

Well, I would lay it down as a principle at this point — and it is applicable not only to this question of prayer but to many other problems as well — that the one thing we have to do in a situation like this is to avoid becoming slaves to our own theories and ideas and to our own understanding of the truth. In avoiding that danger we should go to the Scriptures, and look at the Bible’s plain and obvious teaching with as dispassionate and open a mind as we are capable of. We should do that, I say, not only with regard to this problem of prayer, but with regard to any other problem that may arise in our spiritual experience. There are certain doctrines taught in Scripture quite clearly, but then we come up against something that we cannot quite fit into our doctrinal pattern, and the danger at that point is to stand on our own doctrine and to try to explain away the Scripture. If ever we find a point that seems to conflict with our clear grasp of doctrine, it seems to me that, for the time being, the essence of wisdom is to leave our doctrine where it is. It is not that we deny it, we just leave it for the moment, we come back to Scripture and we note what Scripture has to say everywhere about this particular matter. Then having done that, we again attempt to relate this obvious and clear teaching of Scripture with the doctrine of which we are equally sure.

The Lord Jesus Christ has manifested his Father, and has manifested these names [the names of God in the Old Testament] in a way that transcends everything that I have been saying. Go back to the Old Testament, look at those names, study them, read them – we are meant to do so, for they are absolutely true today. What Christ has done, in a sense, is to let the floodlight in, to open them out, and to enable us to grasp them, because he has done it in his person. Study them, and remember that what God has said is this: he is ‘The Lord, The Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin and that will by no means clear the guilty’ (Ex 34:6-7). Remember that his name is ultimately Love, that he has loved us with an everlasting love and knowing him thus, we can appropriate unto ourselves all the gracious promises. He will provide, he will heal, he will lead, he will enable us to conquer, but above all, and thank his great and holy name for this, he will never leave us nor forsake us, he will always be with us.

Oh, if we could but lay a firm hold upon it and realize again that the Son of God came down into this world of time–we are facing here the whole mystery and glory of the incarnation, of the virgin birth, the humiliation of the Son of God. But the astounding thing is that this person who is praying to the Father, was equal to the Father. He assumed human nature, he came in the flesh, he lived as a man in the likeness of sinful flesh, and here he is himself praying. Indeed, we read elsewhere of him crying out, with strong crying and tears, unto his Father. It is a marvelous, wonderful thing to contemplate, that God has come down in the flesh in order to rescue and redeem us, and opens his heart here to show us his wonderful concern for us and his amazing love with respect to us.